


Open Palmed

by inabsurd



Series: natsu-gem [2]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crystal Gems (Steven Universe), Angst, Body Dysphoria, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grieving, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Reiko is Takashi's mom, told in partial snapshots, youkai and Reiko are gems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28774875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabsurd/pseuds/inabsurd
Summary: The story of Jade and her underlings. The story of Reiko. The story of Takashi.
Relationships: Madara "Nyanko-sensei" & Natsume Takashi, Referenced Past Hinoe/Natsume Reiko
Series: natsu-gem [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117745
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Open Palmed

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Open-Stomached](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22088818) by [KrisseyCrystal (IceCreAMS)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal). 



> I've been saying FOREVER that NatsuYuu and SU have a lot of similarities and I finally cracked and wrote a crossover. I wrote this whole thing in a possessed frenzy yesterday so mistakes are undoubtedly Everywhere. You can blame my friend Krissey for this monstrosity because I read her fic Open-Stomached and I just knew I needed something like it for Natsume. If you get the chance, check out Krissey's fic, she's a fantastic writer! 
> 
> Characters might be a little OOC but Natsume is going through a very Different Set of Circumstances so I think it's allowed.
> 
> Quick guide for people:  
> Jade = Reiko  
> Sapphire = Hinoe  
> Topaz = Madara (uses she/her in this fic because she's a gem)

She is a Jade, a white-amber variety and fairly high standing much to the envy of her peers. She’s no Imperial Jade, nor is she as great as the future-seeing Sapphires, but she is well off and will never have to do a day of manual labour.

She hates it. She’s not good at being a Jade—at the court meetings and managing underlings, or presenting respectfully before her Diamond. She is not cut out for court life, and she is fortunate to have underlings who are fond of her so she does not get reported. If she belonged in Blue Diamond’s court, she might survive such a report, but under Yellow Diamond’s rule (she is too amber to belong to the White Court, which is just as well because those gems have no fun at all) she would surely be shattered for her repeated crimes.

Yes, it is a good thing her underlings like her, and rather unfortunate that the other Jades do not. She is an embarrassment to them, and too unruly to tame, though they have tried many times. Still, they do not report her. It would reflect poorly on all Jades if her habits were to become public, afterall, and the Diamonds do not shy away from group punishment. She has seen the Rose Quartz bubbles, and while she does not care for the other Jades, she does not want to cause them trouble.

Of course, that is hardly avoidable. She is bossy, forgetful, and her belongings and work are always unkempt. Not to mention her love of fighting.

There is an outburst during court. An off-colour—she doesn’t look it, but she must be. Why else would she be running?—stumbles upon them while fleeing from a shattering robonoid, and the robonoid, as it tries to do its duty, damages spiralling pillars around them. No one is hurt, but she sees the robonoid preparing another attack that is bound to hurt either the fleeing gem or her peers, and she acts.

The robonoid is finished, and so is she. Jades are not permitted to fight and should be unable to even summon a weapon.

She flees, and her underlings follow her.

So does the off-colour.

One of her followers is a Nephrite charged with scouting viable colonies with her Peridot companion. Typically, they report to her and she reports to Yellow Diamond. Now, they all pile onto Nephrite’s ship and they take flight. There is no one to report to.

The off-colour, a deep blue Sapphire that reminds her of the endless expanse of space before them all, says, “Go to Earth. We’ll like it there.”

The journey takes no time at all, and yet seems to drag on longer than Jade has even been alive. She hates Homeworld and she is a bad Jade, an off-colour now, too, should anyone ask, but she can’t help but fear for the others left behind, the ones that looked at her with scorn.  _ Was it deserved?  _ she wonders.  _ Have I brought the worst upon them all? _

It’s probably for the best that she is gone.

She loses the dress with its sharp and precise edges. She’s always hated the thing, and so she trades it in for something shorter and rounder. It is lightyears better than what she had been in.

The off-colour notices the change and approaches. “Breaking Homeworld customs so soon?”

“Of course. How else am I supposed to move around and protect you?”

The Sapphire grins, “You make a good point.”

Jade likes her.

* * *

She likes Earth, too, once she gets used to the place. She likes the forests and their hidden foot-trails. She likes their shrines where many of her underlings decide to take refuge. She likes human food and the way it crumbles in her mouth and down her face. The other Jades would have  _ hated  _ it, and she giggles when she eats just thinking about it.

She doesn’t like humans, though. They think she is strange and they avoid her wherever she goes. Their views of her are too much like Homeworld.

Sapphire hates them too.

“Honestly, how dare they treat us this way,” she pulls a handkerchief from her kimono—a human article that looks so much nicer than the poofy gown she had been in when they first met—and rubs at the dirt on Jade’s cheek, “We’re  _ elites,  _ don’t they have eyes?”

“We’re pretty sorry looking elites,” she responds.

Sapphire huffs, “Yes, well, the humans should still be worshipping us. We live in their shrines, don’t we? That makes us important.”

Jade is certain that that’s not how it works, but she is no more human than any of her other companions, and so she says nothing.

The silence stretches on. “I hate the humans,” Sapphire says, “Don’t you?”

“Yes,” she answers, gaze far beyond Sapphire and her handkerchief, “We bring them nothing but trouble.”

“Don’t you mean they bring  _ us  _ nothing but trouble?”

Jade turns to her companion and smiles slowly, “That’s what I said.” She stands then, and slips from their branch and to the forest floor. “Will you fight me, Sapphire?”

From down here, Sapphire looks terribly small, even as she stands to pin her hair up; a human custom she took to after Jade gifted her a pin from town.

The other falls to the forest floor and pulls a scythe from the gem at the base of her throat. “Just once, Jade.”

She grins, “Just once is all I need.”

* * *

“You’ve made quite a name for yourself.” Topaz lounges atop a small shrine, licking her fingers of crumbs. She must have been here a while if the snack wrappers at her feet are anything to go by.

“Did you expect anything less?” she answers. Her club is in her hands in a moment, “Have you finally decided to fight me?”

Topaz shakes her head, “You know I haven’t.”

At this point, she doesn’t even bother to pout. Topaz always turns her down.

The gem gazes at her critically, a blaze in her eye that is rivalled only by the gem that beams on her forehead. “You’ve changed,” Topaz finally says.

Jade shrugs, holding an arm out in front of her. “The clothes? I thought it would help me blend in a little. Human school is boring, but I like the outfit.”

“It’s not just the clothes,” Topaz argues. Her voice is hard, accusing as she asks, “I hear you’ve taken up other human habits,  _ Reiko.” _

“Did you not just say I made a name for myself?” she smiles in a way that the humans have described to her as cat-like. “ _ Reiko.  _ It’s funny, right? A human helped me pick it. He’s fond of puns.”

Topaz looks very unamused.

“It’s funnier if you spell it,” she mutters. “Have you learned any kanji yet?” she asks louder.

Somehow, Topaz looks even  _ less  _ amused.

Reiko flushes, amber colouring her pale cheeks, “I thought you were one of the fun ones,” she accuses, “When did you get all stuffy.”

“When did you start preferring humans to your own kind?” she counters.

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t really like either, honestly, but humans don’t remind me of Homeworld anymore. They’re  _ different.” _

“And I suppose we are too boring for you now?”

“We’ll, you’d be a lot less boring if you just fought with me. I can’t do  _ that  _ with the humans.”

There is a long suffering silence. “Your underlings miss you, Jade. You don’t visit anymore.”

“I’ve seen everything in these woods and fought everyone except  _ you,”  _ she points out. “There is something different with the humans everyday, even if it is just school children throwing rocks at me.”

Topaz glares, and it hits Reiko then how  _ odd  _ the other gem is being. She has never seen Topaz act concerned, not in such an outright way, at least. Usually, she is apathetic or demanding. She is neither of those, though, when she says, “Something is happening to the gems here.”

Reiko shrugs. “They look different, so what?”

“They’re  _ dying,”  _ Topaz stresses, as if death is a concept that can even touch gems. Her hard gaze lingers for several moments. Finally, she shrugs, “Well, I’m sure you’ll get your fill of fights soon enough. They’re quite hostile.” With that, the larger gem scrunches up the wrapper of her final snack and slides off of the shrine as though she doesn’t have a care in the world. She gathers her garbage in silence, and then bounds off into the woods without looking back.

Reiko stands alone in front of the shrine, a gleam in her eye; “So, gems can change too?” she hefts her club over her shoulder and continues deeper into the woods. This path will take her into the depths of Yatsuhara where most of her old followers reside.

She’ll figure out what’s happening all on her own.

* * *

Reiko gets her fill of fights.

She visits even less.

* * *

“He’s going to be different.” she warns.

He squeezes her hand, “Like I ever wanted anything else.”

Their son is born, and Reiko ceases to be. Natsume Takashi is a Jade, and Natsume Takashi is human.

He is her son, and he will be safe with the only man she’s ever cared about.

* * *

Takashi can do strange things that most other kids cannot. Things around him have a tendency to duplicate, and, he learned in his early years after a weekend with a particularly angry relative, he heals very quickly.

There is a stone on his hand, embedded in his skin. He doesn’t know what it is, but he learns to wear long sleeves to try and cover it. Lucky for him, most of his clothing is either too large or too small, and once his relatives see the stone, they opt for too long.

Monsters like to hunt him, too, and it is a good thing Takashi is a minor or else he would be deep in debt from all of the property damage.

He goes to school, and he is transferred. He moves in with a new relative, and they pass him along.

This is his life.

He thinks of his father, a kind man who held him and watched the flowers sway in the breeze. He thinks of his mother, a beast of a woman, he’s told, who brought trouble to all she met. A forgetful woman with overdue library books and lost ticket stubs.

He has no photos of her, but he’s told she was beautiful, if not a little strange looking, and that she never went anywhere without a baseball bat.

Takashi falls down a cliff running from a horned monster, and he is hospitalized for the first time in his life at fifteen.

The Fujiwaras take him in after that. Touko-san cooks two meals a day and makes extra for the bentos she packs him for school. Shigeru-san encourages Takashi to be a little more wild and trusts him to run important errands for him.

He likes them.

* * *

_ “Jade! Jade!” _

Twigs tear at his hair and face, but he does not dare slow down. There’s another monster after him, and now, more than ever, he cannot afford to be attacked. He wants to return to the Fujiwaras and he wants to do so without causing them worry; anything else is unacceptable.

The monster behind him draws closer, growling and snuffling through the undergrowth like it has a personal vendetta against him. He’s used to being chased by monsters, but since moving here, they have definitely become more aggressive.

_ “Jade! Jade, what are you doing?” _

There’s a sound, he thinks, a voice, although not one he can make out over his own frantic gasps for breath. He can’t afford to stop, though, not if he wants to avoid capture.

_ “Oh my stars. Of all times— _ Reiko!”

He pauses, he can’t help it, and then the monster slams into him. Takashi falls onto his back, aching for a split-second before the feeling is gone and his only concern is the lolling tongue trailing out from behind massive canines to eat him.

The stone in his skin glows, and then he feels a weight encompass his hand. He doesn’t hesitate, he just punches the thing.

A cloud of smoke is left in its wake, and something small and hard bounces off of his head.

Then there is a face in front of his.

“Seriously, why didn’t you just  _ do that in the first place?”  _ the person in front of him is bulky and  _ orange,  _ with a star-cut stone shining on its forehead.

A stone like his. 

He looks down in his lap where a triangle-shaped gem resides. 

A stone like a monster.

He raises a fist to do what he did to the last monster to this one, but the weight on his fists has dissipated and the person catches his punch easily.

“I still haven’t agreed to fight you,” they gripe. His fist is released, and Takashi scrambles to his feet. “What’s up with you?” the person asks. They tilt their head, an action far more suited to an animal than a beast of their stature.

The person paces around him, and Takashi scowls as they make it back to his front. “Jade?” they ask.

“What?”

His fist is snatched up once more, but the person in front of him simply pries his clenched fingers open to reveal his own stone. He hardly has a chance to yell a protest before his arm is once again dropped. The orange person eyes him critically. “Reiko?”

“You knew my mother?” he asks.

“Mother? Gems can’t have children.”

Takashi isn’t sure how to respond to that. He takes a step back.

“You’re not going anywhere,” the person says. They match Takashi’s step back with a step forward of their own.

That’s his cue.

He turns and picks up his sprint where he left off.

He doesn’t stop until he reaches the Fujiwara residence, despite not seeing the person chasing him once on his run back.

* * *

There’s an orange cat sitting by the school gate. This normally isn’t something to note, but it is a very fat orange cat, and there is something unmistakably shiny on its forehead that Takashi recognizes in an instant.

Nishimura and Kitamoto, two open and kind classmates of his, have invited Takashi to the arcade with them, but that cat throws all of his plans out the window.

“I’m sorry, maybe next time,” he waves them off as they go and lingers by the shoe lockers until every student has cleared out and it is just him, the cat, and the schoolyard between them. He considers running again, he  _ should  _ run again, except it clearly knows where his school is, and it might attack someone here if he doesn’t deal with it now.

“You’re not Jade,” it says once he is within hearing distance.

Takashi shakes his head. “Sorry, but I don’t know who that is.”

“But you know Reiko, yes?”

That’s the second time this person—cat, whatever—has mentioned his mother. How did it know her?

The cat face, Takashi thinks, suits this creature far more than the tall, terrifying humanoid it posed as before. In this form, its lips are thinner and its eyes more mischievous which seems to be far more honest than the stony expression he saw before.

The cat nods, “What was she to you?”

“My mother,” he says again.

The cat pauses, thinking quite hard. “You’re part human,” it finally declares. The creature looks equal parts proud and awed.

Once again, Takashi is left unsure how to answer. This seems to lead the cat to yet another conclusion, and its face darkens for it. “Reiko’s not around anymore, is she?”

He shakes his head.

The cat sighs, long and low. “What about your other parent? It takes two to make children, right?”

“He died when I was very young.”

For one moment, Takashi thinks that the cat is purring, but what it’s actually doing isn’t much better. It’s laughing.

He walks away, or he tries to, but the cat hops right in the middle of the footpath. Takashi could easily step around, but he pauses anyway.

“It’s just like Reiko,” the cat finally manages to get out. “She always did have rotten luck for a Jade.”

Takashi wants to ask what a Jade is and why it keeps bringing it up, but instead, “How did you know my mother?” slips out.

The cat stares at him, “Buy me manjuu. I can’t talk on an empty stomach.”

It’s down the street from Nanatsuji’s that Takashi is asked, “What do you know about that gem in your palm?”

Takashi stares at it for a moment, the round, hard, white-and-amber stone that is inexplicably part of his anatomy. “Nothing,” he answers honestly, “Just that my mother had the same thing. The doctors analyzed it before I moved here. It’s a gemstone, but they didn’t have the tools to identify it, or learn why I have it.”

“Jade,” the cat says, as though that foreign word means anything to Takashi. “I believe in your Japanese it is called hisui.”

“Isn’t jade green?” he asks, staring at the stone on his palm.

“Moron!” Takashi jumps, “Jades come in a variety of colours, green in but one of them.”

“Right,” he tucks his hand back under his dangling sleeve, “So, why does that matter?”

The cat huffs, “Reiko was not human,” it says slowly, “She just liked to think she was.”

A lump forms in Takashi’s throat.  _ Not human.  _ “What was she, if not human?”

“I already told you; a Jade. A gem.”

_ A gem.  _ “What does that mean, exactly?”

The cat sighs, exasperated, “It  _ means  _ that your mother had a body of pure light and came from outer-space on Homeworld instead from Earth. She was fundamentally different from a human.” Its gaze shifts from Takashi’s face and down to his hidden stone—his  _ Jade.  _ “You’re not all human either.”

* * *

The cat turns out to be  _ Topaz _ , a topaz, but not the only topaz of her kind. Apparently she worked as a guard under his mother before they both fled their planet to this one. Topaz says she hasn’t seen his mother in many long years and apparently had no idea that Reiko was pregnant with him—or that she  _ could  _ become pregnant, for that matter. Gems, it turns out, aren’t born, but are  _ created. _

Takashi has a headache, one that’s not going away anytime soon. Topaz has taken it upon herself to take up her previous position as bodyguard and insists that she move in with him.

He shows up to the Fujiwaras late that night, Topaz tucked into his arms like she is a real cat. He introduces her as Nyanko-sensei, which she begrudgingly accepts. Touko-san’s supper seems to pacify whatever leftover indignation she feels.

This is his life now. He has an alien bodyguard as a  _ pet _ who used to be an underling to his  _ alien mother. _

_ He’s  _ an alien.

* * *

Takashi’s nights are longer now. Topaz is, apparently, a very heavy drinker. She says sake is one of the few things she likes about Earth.

Sake is quickly becoming his least favourite thing.

When she isn’t drinking, Topaz has a habit of dragging him out into the woods to make him train.

“I  _ saw  _ you summon a weapon when that weakling attacked you! How old are you? This should be  _ easy.  _ Gems are created with the ability to summon their weapons. Jade was a natural even though she wasn’t a fighter!”

“Well, I’m not Reiko-san,” he points out with a glare. “I don’t know what I did last time, it just happened.”

She glares at him.  _ In her regular form, she really is an imposing figure,  _ he thinks,  _ No wonder she was a bodyguard. _

“You better figure it out, Beanpole. Corrupted gems don’t just disappear because you’re weak.”

Corrupted gems; that’s what those monsters that have been chasing him his whole life are called. Among all the other revelations he’s had, this one feels minor. Still, he has to ask, “What  _ are  _ corrupted gems anyway?”

“They used to be Jade’s underlings. We followed her from Homeworld when she fled, but after years here, something happened,” a dark shadow falls over his mentor’s face, “They’re not themselves anymore. Those of us remaining don’t know how to fix it, so we’ve been bubbling them when we come into contact with them.”

Everytime Topaz answers a question, Takashi gains another. “Bubbling?”

She waves an arm, “That’s a lesson for later. You need to be able to poof a gem to bubble it first."

His face twitches. “You’re just saying things to frustrate me now.”

Topaz laughs and it booms throughout the forest. “Maybe I am. What are you going to do about it?”

* * *

There is a monster chasing him again. It came to his bedroom in his sleep and he jumped out of the window in an attempt to spare the Fujiwara’s whatever comes next. Luckily, the corrupted gem is spindly and doesn’t destroy any walls, but the tradeoff is its speed. The gem is fast, and a very good climber too. Three times now Takashi has thought himself to be in the clear only to find it launching itself right at his face. He hasn’t been caught yet, but he hasn’t been able to summon his weapon either.

Of all the nights for Topaz to be out of the house.

“Sensei!” he calls. The forest is impossible to navigate in the dark, especially with how turned around he’s gotten. He had been trying to make it to Yatsuhara—that’s where Topaz drinks, or so she says—but at this point, he has no idea if he’s going even  _ close  _ to the right direction.

“Sensei!”

He skids around a large boulder and slides into the undergrowth in his haste. He lays there, panting into his sleeve as he attempts to muffle the noises he makes.  _ Maybe I lost it? _

The shrubbery rustles and, somewhere to his left, he hears a screech. It’s close, way too close. Takashi pulls himself to his feet and out of the bramble just in time to avoid another attack.

He runs headlong into another figure, this one shorter and decidedly more humanoid. She’s freezing to the touch, though, and Takashi knows even before he sees the gem at her throat that she isn’t human. Before he can collect himself, she is pushing herself in front of him, pulling a scythe from seemingly nowhere and slicing the corrupted gem clean in half.

It dissipates, and he hears the gem clatter to the forest floor.  _ Oh. So  _ that’s  _ what Sensei meant by poof. _

The newcomer turns to him then, smiling, not quite brightly, but something close to it. “Jade!” she throws her arms around him, rubbing her cheek against his and spinning, spinning,  _ spinning— _

They are taller now. Far, far taller. He,  _ they _ can  _ see things.  _ See better, maybe? Bodies aren’t supposed to be this squishy, are they? Since when have they known Topaz so intimately, Topaz who gazes at them like they are a stranger—

“Sensei,” they say. They laugh incredulously, “Sensei?”

They pause. They feel cold.

“You’re not Jade, are you?”

There is a burst of light and Takashi gasps for air. Surely, his skin is as blue as this gem— _ Sapphire. How do I know she’s Sapphire? _ —now that they are separated.

“Sensei, what happened?” he’s trembling on the forest floor, thin arms wrapped around too thin shoulders— _ just a moment ago he was  _ big,  _ why did that change? _

Topaz doesn’t have a chance to answer, interrupted by the scythe that pokes under Takashi’s chin.

“How  _ dare you pretend to be Jade.” _

It’s cold. So, so cold. His teeth chatter and his breath freezes before his eyes. Under him, ice creeps along his pant legs.

“I’m not pretending,” he stutters.

The Sapphire isn’t listening, though. She glares, eyes cold and vengeful, “You  _ fused with me!” _

Surely, with how sharp the scythe is, Sapphire does not need to wind up to kill him, but she does, and the moment the weapon is away from Takashi’s throat, Topaz bodily tackles her to the ground.

She goes down without a fight, her scythe gone the moment it’s out of her hands. “Where is Jade?” she cries out. She isn’t sobbing, but Takashi thinks this might be worse.

_ “Where is Jade?” _

Her cries echo throughout Yatsuhara long into the night, and, when Takashi goes home, he hears it from where he lays tucked away in his futon.

Sensei doesn’t return home.

* * *

When Topaz finally makes herself known again, days after the incident with Sapphire and the corrupted gem, she seems to look at him in a new light.

“Sapphire has finally calmed down,” she says, “She’d like to meet you.”

Takashi isn’t sure if he’d like to meet her, but he thinks he owes it to her anyway. Reiko was obviously very important to her and he doesn’t feel like he can leave this unresolved.

Sapphire is smoking at the edge of a pond when they join her, not a trace of frost to be found. She surveys Takashi critically as he approaches and wordlessly holds out her hand.

He offers his own, and she spends many long moments inspecting his gem.

“So,” she says, something wry and bitter coating her words, “She had a human’s end afterall.”

_ Yes, she did.  _ Topaz has told him how long the gem lifespan is; by all rights, Reiko should still be here. 

“Were you and my mother’s friend?” he asks. He doesn’t want to talk about his mother’s death.

“Friends,” Sapphire laughs, her gaze far away, “Jade was one of the only gems I ever cared about. She saved my life, you know? We ran away together with a ragtag group of fugitives while she was still so young. We fused, sometimes, just because it was forbidden on Homeworld and Jade got a thrill breaking rules.” She turns to Takashi, a purple eye peeking out from between her bangs. “Yes, you could say we were friends.”

_ Were  _ friends. Reiko is dead, so it makes sense to use that word, but somehow, it doesn’t feel like that is the way Sapphire means it. “What happened?”

“You,” she blows a plume of smoke in Takashi’s face. “She hated humans when she came here, that’s what she said, but she also said she hated the other Jades. When we fused, I knew she was lying about both. She was fascinated by your kind, and wary. The only fun she got out of gem-kind, in the end, was the thrill of the fight, but  _ humans?”  _ Sapphire grins, equal parts wistful and confused, “Humans, she loved. She kept dressing like you, changing her form to look more like you. In the end, I guess she wanted to make the transformation permanent.”

Confusion blooms in Takashi’s chest, cold in a way that makes him think Sapphire has personally placed it there. “Permanent?”

Sapphire gestures to him with her pipe. “Permanent. Gems don’t have organic bodies, we  _ are  _ our gemstones. The fact that she has managed to encase hers in flesh doesn’t make her any less  _ her.  _ She must have chosen a male form just to spite me. She knows I hate men.”

_ We  _ were  _ friends. She  _ knows  _ I hate men. _

That feels more damning to Takashi than anything else.

“I thought you said I wasn’t her,” he says weakly, “When we...last time, when that thing happened?"

Sapphire sneers.  _ “You  _ are not Jade. The gem on your palm?  _ That’s her.” _

_ His mother—Reiko-san is— _

He holds out his palm, he practically shoves it under her nose. “Take it out,” his voice is monotone, distant, it’s not his voice— _ Is it hers?  _ His hand trembles. “Take it  _ out.” _

Sapphire stares at him for a very long moment, and then stands. “No. Jade did this to herself. I’m sure once your body deteriorates, she’ll be back, but for now, she just has to live with it. I’ll still be here when her game is done. I always am.”

Takashi doesn’t hear Sapphire leave, too busy staring at the gem in his skin—at his  _ mother’s body. _

A hand clamps down on his shoulder, shockingly bright in his peripheral and heavy against his skin.

“Don’t listen to her,” Topaz grumbles, “Sapphire is an idiot, who spends too much time pining.”

“Thank you, Sensei.” Takashi stands, and, together, they walk out of the forest. Touko-san is making stew tonight and it would be a shame to miss it.

* * *

“Oi, Natsume, are you okay?”

Takashi jumps and nearly bangs his head on Nishimura’s, who hovers close at his desk.

“Woah! Careful!”

He smiles thinly. “Sorry, Nishimura. I’m fine.”

The brunet casts a skeptical glance over Takashi’s head. He assumes Kitamoto is behind him, but he doesn’t have the energy to turn.

“You don’t  _ look  _ fine,” Nishimura presses.

“Are you sleeping well?” Kitamoto asks.

“Ah, I suppose I have been up late recently.”

“Math homework?”

“...Yeah.”

Nishimura nods empathetically. 

“The test is tomorrow and then the unit is over,” Kitamoto points out, ever the voice of reason, “Then we never have to see this unit again.”

_ “What?  _ The test is  _ tomorrow?”  _ Nishimura groans, “Good-bye, good grades.”

Takashi laughs, possibly for the first time in days. It feels a little hollow, but it seems to cheer up his classmates. “Hey, Natsume, you’re probably all studied out, right? I pretty much don’t have a chance at this point, so let’s do something fun!” Nishimura suggests.

“I don’t know…” he usually trains with Sensei after school.

Nishimura leans in close, eyes round and wide and  _ pleading.  _ “C’mon, Natsume!” he moans, “If I know you’re at home and being responsible like Kitamoto, I won’t have the will to ever come back to school! We’re comrades, aren’t we? We fail together!”

“Or you could study together?” Kitamoto suggests, but Nishimura breezes right past him.

_ “Please?”  _ he gets down on both knees in front of Takashi’s desk, hands held in prayer fashion. “I’ll pay for all the two player games!”

Takashi stares at Nishimura’s hands, pressed together, open-palmed.

“Can I meet you there?” Takashi asks, probably a little too seriously for the situation. “There’s something I have to do first.”

Nishimura blinks. “Sure?”

* * *

He meets Topaz in the usual spot for training. “I can’t stay long,” he tells her, “I’m meeting a friend.”

Sensei scoffs, “You have a lot of nerve to be slacking off for someone who’s made no progress.”

Takashi doesn’t answer, not verbally. He takes a deep breath, steadying himself, and then slams his palms together with a force, the press of his gem hard against the skin of his other palm. There is a flash, similar to the one he saw when he and Sapphire...did what they did, and then his hands are encased in hefty, white and amber gauntlets.

Topaz gives him a long look. “Not bad for a human,” she finally sniffs, “But you still have a long way to go.”

Takashi smiles. “But it’s not bad.”

A beat. “No, it’s not bad at all.”

**Author's Note:**

> okay confession time: the only reason Reiko ended up being a Jade is because puns. Reiko is spelled 玲子 and, according to my kanji dictionary, 玲 means "sound of jewels" and 玲玲 means "tinkling of jades" FGHJHGFDFGHJ. 子 just means "young", "child", "young woman", ect. so Reiko is an Era Two gem
> 
> I am Absolutely Returning to This Verse like,, the brainworms I am having for this au rn are Everywhere and there was so much for both Reiko and Takashi that I wanted to explore that I didn't get to in this one.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated! I would love to hear your take on this au too


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